This has been an eventful week. Work was very busy. Then on Thursday I had to run down to Victoria. It was time for my 3 month review. Once I passed 3 months things like benefits kick in. I was a little bit worried about it, no too much but it was a rather important meeting. I needn't have worried though. The meeting was less about what I HAD done and more about what the next few months will be about. Finally I knew it was going to be fine when Steve kept giving me things like servers, system cards, wiring tools, and such to take back to the Nanaimo office.  We picked up lunch at a little Japanese place near the Victoria Office. I had Udon noodles with vegetables, smoked tofu and a teriyaki sauce. It was just wonderful, one of the best lunches I've ever had. The next time I go there I think I'll pick up dinner for the two of us. I headed back to Nanaimo with a fully loaded car and some months of projects lined up.

Friday was Good Friday. Up here this is an accurate name because it is a statutory holiday. I got it off from work making it a very good Friday. Marsha had to work but I got to kick back and do very little. This was a good thing too. Saturday was going to be a big day.

I got up at 5:00 and worked out. In hindsight this might have been unnecessary. Then off to Home Depot, only pausing long enough to have a cup of Earl Cream Grey Tea. At Home Depot I picked up some stuff for the afternoon project. Back at home I met up with the neighbor. He had agreed to help me clear some stuff out of the front yard. In the last few weeks I had cleared the last of the big shrubs out of the front yard, trimmed the rosebush, and broken down the junk cabinet that took up so much space in the garage. All of this had to be gotten rid of. The Recycling Center in Nanaimo would take all of it but what would have been a dozen or more loads in the Prius was done in three trips with his pickup truck. Finally several hours of lifting, packing, and unloading stuff  we finished the third load and scratched and fatigued I returned home.

There I found our friend George on the front walkway assembling his brand new tile saw. He had agreed to come over in the afternoon and help me tile the entryway. I had previously removed the old carpet and vinyl flooring out, this was part of the junk I had taken to the Recycling Centre earlier, and put down sanded 3/4" plywood as a smooth subfloor. Now we were going to install the tile we had picked up a few weeks ago. George was having fun with his new tile saw. This was part of the deal. While planning this project I found that it would cost about $70 to rent a tile saw for the day. I knew George had done a lot of tiling, but he didn't have his own saw as he never could justify the cost. I offered to pay him the $70 to help him get his new saw if he helped me with my floor. He jumped at the idea.

First we fit and placed all the tiles. This took a long time. George is a real craftsman. Not only did he do a better, and faster,  job than I could have ever accomplished on my own, he also was quite miserly with the tiles. We have almost a full box left over. One bit that George did was to carve out the tiles around the doorway to the closet. Rather than two or three pieces mortared together he cut notches into the middle of the tiles that fit around the wall in each side of the doorway. The tiles look so good that I almost hate to put the doors back on and hide them.

By 6:30 that evening we had all the tiles cut, fit, and laid out. Then we started mortaring them in place. This was a messy process. We had to be very careful to return the cut tiles to the precise location where they came from. We also could not step on the freshly laid tiles. Lastly we had to make sure we did not tile ourselves into a corner as it were. We started at the family room end  of the entryway and worked one row at a time toward the front door. when we reached the closet we completed that and opened the front door. Lastly we finished the tiles up to the front door and then closed it leaving us outside. I had thought ahead and made sure that the garage door was open so we could get back in. By the time we cleaned up it was nearly 8:00 in the evening. George left and I went inside and collapsed in a heap on the couch.

I have not mentioned the cats. We had them in Kitty-Prison for the day so they would not slip outside. The trouble is that Geiger is a very smart cat. He's learned how to open doors. We lock them up in the living room but he learned quickly how to open the sliding door. They escaped this way several times and finally Marsha locked them up in the bedroom while we finished. Later I returned them to the family room for the night and barricaded the sliding door. This morning however Geiger had figured out how to get the french doors open and came out. By then it was OK though. I wanted to keep them off of the new tile and especially I didn't want them batting around the little plastic spacers until the mortar had set. Now however they are free to run around the place.

This week sometime I'll grout the tiles and figure out how to rehang the closet doors and this project will be done. Today however, is set aside for recovery. After 14 or so hours of heavy hard labor, every muscle in my body hurts. Today I'm sleeping in and laying about. Later on we're running out to Barbara's for Easter dinner.

Oh and Marsha had to work Saturday and Sunday so she was pretty busy too.

Doug and Marsh